


the four corners of an oblate spheroid

by AlexSeanchai (EllieMurasaki)



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: F/M, Gabriel Agreste's A+ Parenting, Identity Reveal, Ladynoir | Adrien Agreste as Chat Noir/Marinette Dupain-Cheng as Ladybug, Podfic Welcome, Puns & Word Play, Romance, Season/Series 03 Spoilers, sitting these two clowns down to talk about their feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-03
Updated: 2019-06-03
Packaged: 2020-04-07 10:13:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19082941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EllieMurasaki/pseuds/AlexSeanchai
Summary: Half an hour ago, Adrien's most immediate worry was whether his father would actually show up to dinner tonight. Now, a decent fraction of Île-de-France is breathing hot dry poison—and it sounds like Ladybug's plan for dealing with the akuma hiding in the column of volcanic smoke is to go inafterit? No. Chat Noir cannotlether.Ladybug doesn't often hear she's had a bad idea. Marinette never hears that from Adrien.





	the four corners of an oblate spheroid

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: I would follow you to the ends of the earth with only mild complaining
> 
> Thanks to silveradept for your encouragement and to Socchan for all your help!

"Oh, no," snaps Chat Noir through the baton currently serving as gas mask, resisting the urge to shake his partner back to sense. Ladybug, after all, _doesn't_ make a habit of googling morbid shit after particularly disturbing akuma attacks, and Tikki probably doesn't know half as much about unpleasant ways to die as Plagg does and wouldn't want to share if she did. Ladybug is probably healthier for it, but she might not _know_ how bad an idea it is to chase an akuma into its pet volcano. "If that eruption column falls over on us, one hundred kilometers per hour is _slow_ , two-fifty degrees Celsius is _cold_ , and we are not going to _care_ anymore about the air quality!"

Half an hour ago, Adrien's most immediate worry was whether his father would actually show up to dinner tonight. _Adrien_ has to whether _Father_ does or not, because it is on Adrien's work schedule and, as he joked to Alya, Nino, and Marinette, "if I don't eat dinner there, someone might notice I don't live there anymore!" Now, a decent fraction of Île-de-France is breathing hot dry poison.

Ladybug blinks up at him over her yo-yo air filter. "No need to blow your top," she says.

"My lady," Chat says, yanking his voice back under control, "I love you, and I will follow you to the ends of the earth with only mild complaining, but I will _not_ follow you into a volcano." That came out wrong. "Nor will I let you go in alone."

"Not 'I lava you'?" asks Ladybug, quirking one ashy eyebrow.

…oops. "Shut up," he grumbles. If they live through this, he is probably in for another gently broken heart. And possibly also another lecture on not flirting on the clock. (He did learn his lesson. Eventually. Honest.) But he also knows 'how much Chat is punning' is a metric Ladybug uses to judge his emotional state, and if that helps her get the point, _he will fucking take it_. "I mean it. We'll _die_."

He's not crying. Sulfur dioxide irritates the eyes, that's all.

"I was going to say we should try to smoke him out of there," Ladybug says, and Chat stares for a moment and erupts with laughter.

* * *

The Parisian evening air is clear and cool, caressing Ladybug where she stands solitary on the second level of the Eiffel Tower, watching tiny lights flow along avenues as blood cells through veins: her city's heartbeat.

A soft thump behind her announces her partner's arrival, and he comes to lean silently against the railing beside her. "Needed air?" Chat Noir asks, and Ladybug nods. "Same here," he says.

Chat's tail slides around Ladybug's waist; she isn't sure he knows he's done it, and she doesn't want to ask, because if he didn't know then he'll get self-conscious and take it back. "What did I ever do to deserve you?" she asks instead.

"Just lucky, I gas?"

Ladybug elbows him. "It occurred to me earlier," she says, "nobody else I know would think to tell this me I'm about to do something horribly ill-advised."

Marinette hears such things all the time, of course. But Ladybug? Never.

"I think that's something I need from a partner," she continues. "Any partner, in anything. More so the more important the partnership is. And it's—I never get that from the guy I love."

Adrien's closest approach to telling Marinette something wasn't going to go well remains setting up that picnic early in the evening of Heroes' Day. Not saying the picnic was a bad idea in the first place, though it was; just making sure it would work out anyway. And Adrien's always had more spine when dealing with Marinette than with Ladybug: case in point, sensible people like she'd thought he was would hesitate before jumping from two hundred meters up.

(Ladybug would have grabbed him and jumped if he hadn't jumped himself, with the plan of going in the first open window she saw, and crashing through a closed one if they got halfway down without finding a safer entry. But she'd…still expected a _moment_ longer to get to his side before he went over. Maybe Gorizilla would have grabbed them both again, not just her, if Adrien hadn't jumped as soon as he did—but that would probably have been less terrifying than knowing he was falling, not knowing where her partner was, and knowing she might not be able to save him.)

"I might always love him," Ladybug says, "but…I don't think I can make a future with him."

She's known that for a while, truth be told. After the third or fourth time he started dating someone, only to break it off over someone he's known in a professional capacity for years and none of their friends have ever met, it seemed obvious. But whoever that is _isn't_ interested in a more personal relationship with him, and…it doesn't really matter how confident Marinette is Adrien wouldn't be sad much longer over that person if he were dating _her_ , does it?

Ladybug was never planning to get all that close to today's pyrotechnic show, but if she were, Chat Noir would have stopped her. Did stop her. Adrien wouldn't have. Couldn't have, but wouldn't have tried.

Chat's gone tense beside her.

"Not like I could with you," she says.

"I'm not—not sure where you're taking this."

He isn't even looking at her; his gaze is determinedly outward, over the pulse of their city. Which, well. She almost can't bear to watch him right now either.

"You are a ridiculously attractive man," Ladybug says dryly. "I'm certain you've noticed." Whether he knew _she_ has, she isn't sure, but she's _professional_ , not lesbian, ace, or dead. "And I trust you, and you love and trust me, and—there are many worse foundations for a relationship."

Chat's trembling. Ladybug pushes closer.

"So if you're still interested," she says, and finds she doesn't know how to finish the sentence.

"Ladybug." His voice is thin, thready, not at all characteristic of the confident man she's spent the past five years watching him become. "Tell me you're joking."

She blinks. "What for?"

"I need you to tell me you're joking," Chat repeats. "If—if you might ever take this back—" He's looking at her now, a desperation in his bright eyes that she only sees when they're reaching new heights of inescapable danger: the first time was Animan, and the most recent, this morning. "I can't give you this if you'll ever take it back."

"Chaton," she says, thinking _you're an idiot_ and not sure which of them she means, and stands on tiptoe and wraps her arms around his shoulders to pull his face down to hers.

—Oh. So—so _that's_ what this is supposed to feel like.

(Guiltily, she thinks about the kiss she wouldn't know about if Alya hadn't photographed it. It is maybe a little possible, though she will never admit this, that Chat Noir was right all along.)

Chat breaks the kiss to breathe, pulling her close; she lets herself lean on him, listening to his heartbeat.

"So," he says, and he still sounds hesitant, but not fearfully so: more the pause to look both ways before striding into the crosswalk, keeping his audacity free of recklessness. "If we're doing this—and I think I already know what you're going to say," he adds, "but I'm asking anyway—if we're doing this, I think it should be without the masks."

…Ladybug honestly did not think that far.

She's always refused to hint at her identity, or pay attention when he hints at his, but, well. Ladybug and Chat Noir still…really shouldn't be dating. Marinette and whoever he is under the cat ears, though? That could be different. Maybe it should be different. She's done okay at keeping Hawkmoth off the scent of her loved ones; as well as she ever could have, given how many of her friends got akumatized in the first year alone. He's never suggested he's done worse than she.

And who can Ladybug possibly ever trust with this vital a secret, if not her partner?

"Well, yeah," she says instead. "If you were planning on having sex in this armor, I have some bad news for you."

Chat laughs so hard he almost falls over. Ladybug guides him down to the flooring and occupies his lap.

When he catches his breath, he kisses her again, peppering her with bright little brushes of his lips until she, laughing helplessly, tells him to stop. "You wanted the masks off," she reminds him.

"Ah." Chat looks away, sobering. "Yeah."

"…Minou?"

He shakes his head. "Nothing, it's—nothing."

It is not either. And without the kisses to distract her, Ladybug has a good guess what his problem is. Quietly, she says, "I'm scared too."

Chat's gaze snaps back to her. "What? Why?"

Ladybug shrugs. "Everyone I know likes me in this mask better than me out of it. Can't blame them," she adds. "I like me better this way too. I scramble my sentences a lot less and I hardly ever fall on my nose."

"Still madly clumsy?" Chat asks, snickering.

"What, you thought that stopped?" He noses at her cheek instead of answering. "I don't know what you'll think of me," she continues. "I don't…want you to think less of me."

"You're not secretly Lila Rossi, right?" Ladybug swats him; Chat snorts. "I had to check," he says. "Because that's the actual only way I can think of offhand I _could_ think less of the woman under the mask than I do of you right now."

"Good to hear," Ladybug decides. "You go first."

"Anyway, we might never have met." He's tensing again. "I know you have some opinion of me, even if I'm not really sure what it is. But you—I might not know you. I might not know anything about you."

Ladybug frowns, thinking of the disaster that led up to her father's akumatization. "No, we've met," she says, running through everyone she's ever encountered as Ladybug, ruling out first those who she hasn't run into often enough he'd expect her to have an opinion on them. "You like me. You said so."

The people Ladybug's met several times are mostly people in her year and especially her classes at Collège Françoise Dupont (and Lycée Anaïs Nin; not so much Istituto Marangoni, but no one from The Cursed Troisième Class followed Marinette to university), and close friends and relations of those classmates. Not all—August Leclair and Xavier Ramier are perhaps simply phenomenally unfortunate, and she has no idea how Pauline Leclair has avoided being akumatized even once—but most.

But she's seen Chat Noir beside every single one of those people. In most cases, several times.

She asks, "Why are you so sure I think something of you if you don't think we've met?"

Chat shrugs and doesn't reply.

"Unmask together?" Ladybug suggests, tilting his head gently enough that he can look away if he wants to, but surely enough that he knows she doesn't want him to.

Nodding, he holds up three clawed fingers. Two. One.

Sparkles race along them both. Two kwami spiral into being, take one look at them and one at each other, and bolt for the far side of the tower, Plagg cackling in a language she doesn't know.

Marinette stares into Adrien's eyes: the same vivid emerald as Chat Noir's. She'll focus on that, she decides, lightheaded. She knew her partner didn't _really_ have slit pupils and green sclera, but it's something else to _know_ it.

"…well, I'm doomed," says Adrien.

"What?" says Marinette, blankly.

"How were you worried I'd think less of you?" Adrien traces two fingers along her jawline, gentle as a rose petal. "You're _Marinette_."

That makes no sense. She shakes her head: more important things. It can't be too much of a problem anyway, given how he's beaming.

She's seen that look on Adrien's face before, actually: like when he was complimenting her reflexes, the day Kagami joined his fencing class. "You should have told me you're claustrophobic."

He blinks at her. "Huh?"

"Riposte," she clarifies. "I wouldn't have tried hiding you in a small space like that if you'd _told_ me it'd be a problem."

"I did tell you, Marinette," Adrien reminds her. It's true, if only of a year or so after the day they're discussing. That's not relevant. Chat Noir told Ladybug that day, but in the third person and after the fact, so that doesn't count either. Adrien told Ladybug something different, and again, too late to be useful. "And it didn't matter where you wanted me to hide while you handled Riposte. I wasn't going to stay there when you needed your partner. And once Chat Noir showed up, she wasn't going to find Adrien anyway."

"You were getting around the part where I had a bad idea by making sure the problem parts weren't going to be problems," Marinette says slowly. "While putting the important part into action. It's not that you don't tell me when I have bad ideas, is it?" Adrien raises an eyebrow, and she continues, "It's that you make my ideas _better_. You make them _work_."

"Scientist," Adrien says, tapping her cheek with his thumb, and indicates himself with his other. "Engineer."

Making it work in theory, versus making it work in practice. "Good point."

Adrien grins at her. "I am pretty sharp sometimes."

Okay, she can work with a sword theme. "Now you're asking for a pommeling."

"I might be keen on that, yeah," he says, eyes gleaming, and Marinette surges up to kiss the smirk off his face.

The cool breeze is beginning to bite, as Marinette finds out when Adrien slides a hand up the back of her blouse, baring a stretch of skin. "Let's go _not_ be exhibitionists," she therefore suggests. Adrien still lives with his father—well, 'lives', because half the time Alya's tossing Marinette out of their apartment in order to fuck Nino, it's because nobody wants to see Adrien's kicked-kitten look as he heads away from Nino's couch towards his actual bed, and Ladybug knows Chat's been running all over Paris for years when she'd rather he were sleeping. Even if she were comfortable with the idea of amorous activity in a building also containing Nathalie Spoilsport and Gabriel Killjoy, she wouldn't suggest going there. (And yeah, she may have a few fantasies set outdoors, where anyone might see—but she's not about to say that out loud for a while.) "We can kick Alya out for a change."

Adrien snorts. "Nino's already _at_ your place. Though if he'd rather have them fucking in his bed than us, that's his call, I guess."

Um.

"Uh," says Adrien, easing Marinette off his lap so he can get to his feet. "Too fast?"

"…Maybe." She chews her lip, accepting his hand up. "Your mystery coworker…was that me?"

Adrien shifts his grip. "Who else?" he asks, something low and intent in the sound, and lifts her hand to his lips. Her face burns, and he stills: "You've never blushed like that before."

—Well, no, Marinette supposes Ladybug hasn't. "Not when _Chat Noir_ kisses my hand, no. Tikki," she adds, turning to call in the direction their kwamis went, and finishes "Spots on!" when Tikki appears, Plagg following.

Adrien watches her, visibly awed.

"Who did you think I was turning my partner down for all this time?" Ladybug asks.

Rubbing the back of his neck and flushing, he looks away. "Someone cool," he mumbles.

She shakes her head. "You're ridiculous. Come on, armor up, let's go."

He fishes a wedge of cheese out of his shirt pocket: Camembert, presumably, since that's what Chat complains Plagg likes too much, which certainly puts a different perspective on Adrien's claims that it's the queen of cheeses. "Don't even say anything," Adrien tells Plagg.

"Wasn't gonna," Plagg says through his mouthful of cheese.

"I don't believe you. Plagg, claws out!"

Ladybug beams up at her partner. _Her partner_ , smiling at her in this soft, heated way, and twining his fingers with hers.

And maybe she'll yell at herself later for letting her perfectly reasonable safety concerns keep them apart so long, and maybe she won't. Maybe they'll decide to postpone anything much past kissing for a while, and maybe they won't. Maybe she'll talk him into moving in with her (or, less intimately but also entirely acceptable, Nino) where she can make better sure he'll sleep nights, and maybe she won't.

None of that matters right now.

She tugs her hand free and takes her yo-yo. "Race you home!" Ladybug says, and launches herself over the railing above the heart of their city, hearing Chat Noir swear and follow.

**Author's Note:**

> This may sprout a second chapter later, because Alya and Nino's reactions are going to be hilarious and Gabriel's frightening. ~~Or a sequel, because Socchan is not wrong about how this could need a higher rating really quickly.~~ But for now I'm marking it complete.
> 
> Find me on [Dreamwidth](https://alexseanchai.dreamwidth.org/) and [Tumblr](http://alexseanchai.tumblr.com/).


End file.
